Post-game nutrition recovery for late night games

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by athletes is whether or not it’s ok to eat after a game that finishes late at night.  The common misconception is that dinner should not be eaten after a certain time in the evening.  This does not apply for athletes! If you are on the couch for the night, then yes, eating dinner earlier may be a good choice.  However if you have just finished a tough away game at 10pm it doesn’t matter what time it is, you should be eating after! Sports nutrition recovery principles apply regardless of the time.

Recovery Nutrition

Getting your recovery right helps to set yourself up for the next training session or game, which for most junior basketballers is likely the following day (for example, a late Friday night game, into school basketball the next morning and/or a domestic game in the afternoon).  Friday night recovery food is important!

Priorities:

Refuel carbohydrate stores for energy for the next day

Repair muscle damage to reduce soreness and promote muscle growth

Rehydrate by replacing fluid and electrolyte losses

Revitalise by choosing anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense foods

Key Nutrition Elements:

CARBOHYDRATE - FUEL Rice, quinoa, noodles, potato, sweet potato, pasta, bread

PROTEIN - MUSCLE Meat, fish, chicken, eggs, milk, cheese, yoghurt

HEALTHY FATS - INFLAMMATION Avocado, nuts, fish, olive oil

SODIUM - HYDRATION

ANTIOXIDANTS, VITAMINS, MINERALS Vegetables, fruit, herbs, wholegrains, nuts, seeds

How do we achieve these recovery goals with food? Unfortunately it’s pretty difficult to achieve with the typical take-away options on offer on the drive home.

OPTIONS:

• BYO from home - you’ll need a food thermos and a good cooler bag, but with some planning and organisation it can be done!

• OR bring some nutrient-dense snacks for immediately post-game then have leftovers ready to heat when you get home.

• OR be selective with the type of take-away purchased

The following snack options work well and can be a good start to the recovery process if it’s more than an hour or so before you can get home to eat.

• Chicken and salad wrap

• Sushi rolls

• Pasta or rice dish with chicken or meat and vegetables

• Soup and a cheese roll

• High-protein yoghurt with handful of almonds or cashew nuts, plus berries

• Vegetable frittata

• Home-made sausage rolls

• Up’n’Go or Rokeby Farms smoothie and a piece of fruit

  Even though some of these need be kept hot or cold, there are lots of storage options out there that will keep food at the right temperature for a few hours. The biggest challenge is being organised and thinking ahead of time.  Some options are easier than others!                        

If you get a good snack in during the car ride, then aim for another small meal or snack once you get home. This should be pre-prepared so it can easily be re-heated quickly. I would recommend to eat straight away on arrival home before a shower, as this allow a little bit of time for digestion before heading to bed.

Example leftovers for recovery:

·        Beef and vegetable stir-fry with rice or noodles

·        Pasta or lasagne with chicken or lean meat tomato sauce, add vegetables

·        Home-made souvlaki or burritos or hamburgers

·        Chicken and vegetable curry with rice

        Soup with pasta/noodles/rice and meat/chicken/legumes

Even a toasted sandwich with some fruit, or a fruit smoothie can be a great recovery choice for when you haven’t had time to pre-prepare food and everyone is tired. Kids’ appetites can drop as it gets later and they are more fatigued, so it’s important to make sure they do have something to eat and drink before they fall into bed. 

Yes, the golden arches do tend to call us when it’s a long drive home from a late rep game, and sometimes (or often) that’s where you end up.  However with a little forward planning you can put in place some strategies that become habit for post-game nutrition to help improve energy levels and performance for the rest of the weekend.

Lisa has worked with NBL teams Melbourne United and South East Melbourne Phoenix over 10 years and currently works with Basketball Victoria junior high performance programs. She also has two very active children who play a lot of sport, including basketball.

Recovery smoothie

Image courtesy of Bec Doyle Photography

This smoothie is the perfect option post-exercise, containing carbohydrate, protein, antioxidants, electrolytes and fluid for recovery.  Rice milk is great to include in smoothies after training for fast recovery, due to its high glycemic index, but dairy milk could also be used.  Rice milk doesn’t contain any protein, so we have added protein from yoghurt, almond meal and skim milk powder.  You can use a whey protein powder if you like, but you can get enough high quality protein for recovery using real food.  This smoothie contains banana and berries, but you can vary the fruit you use to suit your individual tastes.

Serves 1

 1 cup/250ml rice milk (calcium fortified)

100g/3.5 oz protein-rich Greek yoghurt

1 medium ripe banana, chopped

¼ cup/40g frozen berries

1 tbsp ground almonds

1 tbsp skim milk powder

Combine all ingredients and blend, pour into a tall glass to serve.

Green leaf goodness: kale vs spinach vs rocket, and the winner is.....

Do you love kale.  Or do you just eat it because it is supposed to be good for you?  I like kale, but I do question the hype.  So I decided to look a little closer and do some nutrient comparisons.  Specifically, I was keen to look at the differences between kale and other common green leafy vegetables that are used in similar ways to kale - spinach and rocket (arugula) and your everyday iceberg lettuce.   

Kale is not a new vegetable.  Kale has been around for centuries, with its popularity as a 'superfood' having only skyrocketed in recent times.  Does kale deserve this reputation as the king of all things green?  Kale is from the cabbage family and related to the highly nutritious cruciferous group of vegetables, which includes broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts.  There are many different types of kale, with either curly or flat leaves, which can be eaten in a variety of ways, from salads to soups and smoothies.

To start with, let's just clarify that ALL dark green vegetables are packed with nutrients. Any small differences in nutrient content can be balanced out by eating a variety of greens for a range of different nutrients and health benefits.  This is easy if you like vegetables!  But if your palate hasn't quite extended to enjoy green vegies and you know you probably don't eat enough, then small differences could have more of an impact, and it may be well worth focusing on those vegetables with a higher nutrient density.

So here are the statistics for kale vs. spinach vs. rocket vs. iceberg lettuce.  Of course there are many other green vegetables, but these represent some that are often used interchangeably with kale.  These figures are from the US and represent a tested sample of each vegetable.  Therefore they are approximate values only, as nutrient content can vary from place to place, often due to growing conditions.  Although approximates, these figures still provide a useful comparison for measurable nutrients.  

What do you think?  First of all, I know some people may have looked straight at thecarbohydrate values and panicked when they saw that kale has over twice the amount of carbs compared to the other greens.  Before you throw your kale out, remember that 8.8g is a tiny amount of carbohydrate and these values are per 100g, which is a lot more than a standard serve.  Leafy greens are pretty light, so a serve of kale with other mixed vegetables is more likely to be around 20g, providing less than 2g of carbohydrate, which is practically nothing.   

My interest is not so much in the kilojoules or carbs, but the vitamin and mineral content and nutrient density.  Looking per 100g (which indicates the % of the nutrient in a food), the nutrient contents for kale look pretty impressive and you can see where the claims arise for 'high calcium' and 'rich in Vitamin C'.  But again, because leaves are so light, you need to divide the nutrient by 4 or 5 to get a better idea of actual nutrient content per serve.  

The firs thing that really stands out to me when I look at this table is the vast difference in nutrient content between the darker green leafy vegetables and iceberg lettuce.  Iceberg just doesn't compare really, right across the board.  This provides a very clear message that for nutrition, stack your salads with darker leaves.  Of course iceberg lettuce provides wonderful texture and can be a great base for other flavours within a salad, but for nutrition it really lags behind.

If we then look back to compare kale with spinach and rocket lettuce, for most nutrients there are only small differences.  When you compare the differences to the huge gap to the iceberg lettuce, then you realize that kale, spinach and rocket are jostling for first line position, with iceberg a distant last, rather than being spaced out well across the field.   Kale and rocket have more calcium than spinach but spinach has more iron (although not terribly well absorbed).  Most differences are minimal and although I could analyse every nutrient, when we consider the overall impact on health there is really no point.  There are, however, a handful of nutrients for which kale is a standout.

Kale is a far greater source of Vitamin C and Vitamin K compared to spinach and rocket.  Kale contains 120mg/100g Vitamin C, so per serve may contain around 25-30mg Vitamin C, making it a useful source when eaten raw.  Vitamin C can be damaged with heat/cooking so cooked kale may not provide the same benefits as raw. 

Kale is high in Vitamin K, which is particularly important for blood clotting, but not a nutrient that is at a high risk of being low or deficient for most people.  So strong is the blood clotting effect, that people need to monitor their intake of Vitamin K if they are taking blood-thinning medication such as warfarin.

Kale and spinach are both able to supply plenty of Vitamin A, an important nutrient for the health of our skin and eyes. The beta-carotene in kale and spinach can also act as an antioxidant.

All other differences in nutrients are either minor, or insignificant or not all that important for overall health.  One thing that is missing from the table above is baby spinach leaves.  I have found it difficult to find nutrient breakdown info for baby spinach to compare to regular spinach, but have read that the baby leaves may be higher in some nutrients and lower in others.  Current data on baby spinach would be welcomed. I have a sneaking suspicion that the baby spinach, such a popular option in salads, may in fact not be quite as nutrient dense as regular spinach, but I would love to compare the figures to be sure.

It is important to remember that the nutrients presented in the table above are those that we can measure readily in food, but this analyss neglects those other phytonutrients which are not routinely tested for.

Nitrate is the other one that is not listed above, but is present in dark green leafy vegetables.  Nitrate may have an important role for athletes by reducing the energy cost of exercise - nitrate is taken in concentrated form via beetroot juice for performance effects, but there is potential for green vegetables to contribute to nitrate intake also.  For more on nitrate visit my article Green Vegetables Can Make You Go Faster and For Longer - Really! and this one by Alan McCubbin Beetroot Juice: Good Science or Great Marketing Hype.  

Kale is reported to contain important antioxidants, including flavonoids and polyphenols.  Kale contains the flavonoids quercetin and kaempferol.  Quercetin has received some attention for a potential influence on endurance exercise capacity, however published research findings have been mixed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21606866).  Antioxidants provide a range of health-related benefits and dark green vegetables, including kale, contain plenty.

So it seems that kale really is good for us, but is the nutrition value worth making the effort for?  I recall the first time I tried kale and it was definitely a case of take it or leave it!  I continued to revert back to the trusty spinach leaves as my tried and true salad base.  But lately I have been experimenting a bit, and recently ordered a kale salad with prawns and haloumi at a local restaurant.  When it came out I was actually very concerned about how I was going to manage to eat the amazingly large bowl full of green curly raw leaves, that to be honest looked terribly unappetizing.  But here is the thing with kale, and in fact most green vegetables.  How you prepare it and what you add to it can make or break your eating experience.  On this occasion, the chilli and lemon on the prawns, with the salty haloumi, pinenuts and a yoghurt based spicy dressing made the seemingly throat scratching unchewable bowl full of kale totally edible. In fact it was delicious.

The benefit of adding some healthy fats, like olive oil, avocado and nuts, is that the fat helps with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, such as Vitamin A, from the leaves.  So dressing your kale with some oils for flavour has the added benefit of boosting the nutrient availability.

The other great thing about kale is that, unlike many other so-called superfoods, kale is not ridiculously expensive when you consider other similar alternatives.

So what's the verdict, does kale win out over all other green vegetables as the senior member of the superfood brigade?  Kale is just one of the wonderful foods that is no doubt super, but certainly not that much more super than spinach, and for some nutrients less super.  But well worth including as one of your green vegetable options within different coloured vegetables every week. 

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